AZUMA, KOICHIRO, FUMINORI KATSUKAWA, SHUJI OGUCHI, MITSURU MURATA, HAJIME YAMAZAKI, AKIRA SHIMADA, AND TAKAO SARUTA. Correlation between serum resistin level and adiposity in obese individuals. Obes Res. 2003;11: 997-1001. Objective: Resistin is associated with insulin resistance in mice and may play a similar role in humans. The aim of our study was to examine the relationship of serum resistin level to body composition, insulin resistance, and related obesity phenotypes in humans. Research Methods and Procedures: Sixty-four young (age 32 Ϯ 10 years), obese (BMI 32.9 Ϯ 5.6), nondiabetic subjects taking no medication, and 15 lean (BMI 21.1 Ϯ 1.3) volunteers were studied cross-sectionally. Thirty-five of the subjects were also reevaluated after 1.5 years on a weight reduction program entailing dieting and exercise; changes of serum resistin were compared with changes of BMI, body composition, fat distribution, and several indices of insulin sensitivity derived from plasma glucose and serum insulin levels measured during 75-g oral glucose tolerance test. Results: In a cross-sectional analysis, serum resistin was significantly higher in obese subjects than in lean volunteers (24.58 Ϯ 12.93 ng/mL; n ϭ 64 vs. 12.83 Ϯ 8.30 ng/mL; n ϭ 15; p Ͻ 0.01), and there was a correlation between resistin level and BMI, when the two groups were combined ( ϭ 0.35, p Ͻ 0.01). Although cross-sectional analysis in obese subjects revealed no correlation between serum resistin and parameters related to adiposity or insulin resistance, longitudinal analysis revealed change in serum resistin to be positively correlated with changes in BMI, body fat, fat mass, visceral fat area, and mean glucose and insulin ( ϭ 0.39, 0.40, 0.44, 0.50, 0.40, and 0.50; p ϭ 0.02, 0.03, 0.02, Ͻ0.01, 0.02, and Ͻ0.01, respectively). Discussion: Resistin appears to be related to human adiposity and to be a possible candidate factor in human insulin resistance.

A meta-analysis was performed in order to test the hypothesis that Japanese have a greater amount of abdominal visceral fat (AVF) relative to abdominal subcutaneous fat (ASF) than Caucasians. Data were derived from published studies that included mean values for AVF and ASF areas, measured using computed tomography, and age for native Japanese, African-Americans, and Caucasians of both genders. Mean values from each study were used as single data points. A significant difference in AVF was observed between Japanese and Caucasian populations after adjusting for ASF, age, and sex ( p<0.05). However, the difference in AVF between Japanese and Caucasian females was lower than that between African-American and Caucasian females.

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We found that variability in the serum resistin level might be related to polymorphic variants of the promoter region of the gene.

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